TL;DR:

Live A Live is a set of varying stories with a unique set of play mechanics for each.  The problem isn't that it's unique, the problem is that it's heavily unbalanced; half of the stories are breeze easy where the other half are either unnecessarily difficult or blatantly require a guide to understand what you need to do.

And no, that's not "how SNES games worked" - Not a single SNES game required a strat guide to just play through the game. None.  Live A Live is simply poorly balanced.  Some may like that - good.

I have to do this story by story to make it fair, frankly.

Prehistory

Terrible.  There's no text - you're having to interpret what the meaning of things are from picture bubbles.

Worse, you're essentially required to craft items but there's no in-game way to know what you'll get.  You also run into some people who will craft for you in the field but it's not obvious that's what they want to do.  There's a point in this story where you'll be stuck around overpowered enemies and unable to really even grind effectively.  If you had crafted the overpowered weapons you can reasonably survive, but because there's nothing in the game telling you that you should do it, there's a high chance you overlook it.  Yes, you can replay - you shouldn't have to do that.  Nor should you be essentially forced to find a guide or randomly play around to see what it does.  The result is that you'll get absolutely wrecked, and even if you do try to grind, the main character will likely get targeted and taken out, removing their chance to get EXP.

It's important people understand: if you're assuming people played the SNES version, that's bubble.  I assure you, hardly nobody outside of gaming bubbles played this.  So they're coming at it fresh new.  Games don't have to blatantly tell you what to do, but it certainly should try to base guide you.  Even Final Fantasy I, which arguably told the gamer NOTHING, had certain obvious queues (i.e. while walking around town you notice pirates at the dock and get curious as to what's going on).

Wild West

This one wasn't "terrible", but it needed more visual queues.  Basically, there's a "timer" where you'll either need to set as many traps as possible to limit the amount of enemies you fight or just deal with it.  The problem is that some of the trapsetters aren't the fastest; I was short one because I didn't realize that one of the traps was character-exclusive until after I had already dispatched him.  Outside of that, the story was light and somewhat lacking, though it felt like it should have been compelling and interesting had they done just a bit more. Underutilized, in other words.

Present

This one has you playing a fighter that wants to learn and develop as much as he can to be the best.  It's actually quite interesting; the interface is like Street Fighter, where the opponents are just selectables, but then the strategy comes into play like Mega Man.  Each of the enemies has moves that will help you beat another enemy in the group.  I rather enjoyed this scenario, but it was way too short and limited.  There's hardly any story whatsoever, so even though it was generally "fun", you're left unfulfilled and wanting for more.

Distant Future

Ugh.  That's all I can say about this. Arguably the worst of the bunch, as you're taking control of a robot, and the vast majority of this is rolling back and forth between rooms talking to people.  It tried to tell a tragic story and in some ways was successful, I'm talking about "fun". It's not here.

Twilight of Edo Japan

As bad as Distant Future is, Edo Japan is close.  Here, you're a shinobi that is trying to sneak into a compound to save a hostage.  You have the choice of stealth (Which is quite boring) or straight up attacking (which is limited because your shinobi likes to miss more than land and frequently get himself killed).  If the accuracy wasn't in place, this might have been a better scenario.  It does get slightly better once you rescue the prisoner you've been tasked to find.

Near Future

Ok, so this isn't necessarily "bad", it's just lacking in true potential.  If anyone remembers Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES, this chapter reminds me of Area 3 - where you're walking around town and then have to hit sewers at points.  You play a teenager that is staying at an orphanage and causes trouble every so often, but it feels...dunno, disconnected.  Like you can't really create any emotional attachment to anyone or anything that you're interacting with.  Difficulty takes a steep curve upwards roughly at the 3rd quarter of the segment.

Imperial China

This was the only real "good" one.  Here, you play an aging kung fu master that realizes his life is about to end soon and wants to find a successor, eventually encountering three potentials.  This starts out slow - the training phases do get a bit dry - but eventually things pick up after a somewhat emotional event.  How you train will essentially "choose" your successor for you, and it is this that creates different types of challenge for late game.  It's also a decently good story where there's at least some emotional attachment.

Middle Ages

This chapter plays out like a regular RPG, and is arguably the most generally "Fun" of the bunch. It starts out as what feels like a parody of Dragon Warrior (Quest), then slowly devolves into trying to tell a tragic story about the kingdom and the people.  I wouldn't say it was well written, but it certainly had more freedom than the rest, and they at least tried to do something cohesive.

Final Scenario

Here, you'll choose whether to select some of the previous characters to "wrap things up", or you can choose the main character from Middle Ages in a plot twist of sorts.  This was generally unbalanced - difficulty levels that made no sense.  None of it was hard, simply that the difficulty is widely inconsistent and the payoff wasn't really felt, same issue that Octopath Traveler had, where they're just people tossed together but there's no real cohesion between them.

SUMMARY THOUGHTS

I'm not telling you that this is a "bad" game.  But it's not a good "game". Meaning it's just a game; a way to pass time, something different to do while you wait to be potentially disappointed with Xenoblade Chronicles 3.  And it's important you read: I said POTENTIALLY DISAPPOINTED, as in, I believe you might like this over XBC3 because of the unnecessarily drastic changes of that game that look to be significant steps backward.